the biggest “about freakin time” return to writing new music: pierce the veil. not everyone is a fan of vic fuentes’ fiery clean vocals, but i think he’s plenty talented. he pulls beautifully effortless bloodcurdlers in and out of a confident and unique voice.
i’ve loved pierce the veil for a long time. their particular brand of emotion-fueled post-hardcore is a comfortable balance of screaming and singing backed with talented musicianship and numerous musical nods to the fuentes brothers’ hispanic heritage.
it’s been almost exactly two years since Selfish Machines was released [june 2010] and i am unbelievably excited to hear what the boys put out next. this track in particular, King For A Day, is stunning. showcasing all of what’s good and loveable about the previous record but undeniably forward looking. for all the confidence and rage of this song, i’ll even forgive them for the three seconds of dub.
kellin quinn’s guest appearance is a great touch, though it can be hard to distinguish him from vic at times. who cares. i love them both. i can’t wait. i cannot. wait.
cheers,
edit: after a few more listens, i have to add this. but wow, kellin and vic are both wunderkinds. WOW.
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a few thoughts on skrillex’s new EP, bangarang.
i was iffy on it at first, but it’s really growing on me. i put skrillex’s ‘more monsters and nice sprites EP’ on my list of ‘2011 must haves’ as a runner up, simply because it wasn’t a real album and barely an EP in its own right. more monsters had 3 new songs [2 of which were pretty much the same. i’m looking at you, ruffneck] and 3 MORE remixes of scary monsters & nice sprites, which honestly weren’t getting any better than the original or the scary monsters EP reworkings by genre champs noisia and zedd.
it’s easily apparent that sonny moore has been pushing and twisting genres since the name skrillex made it big. there are those [myself included] who think that skrillex has a foot in dubstep, but is moving right out of that and into something new, brostep. brostep is known for being more aggressive and pushy than its older brother, with an emphasis on the mids as opposed to the subtler bass focus found in dubstep.
back to bangarang. very solid set of 7 NEW songs. no more outside remixes, no more remixes of himself. i know these songs have been floating around on youtube in some shape or form, but the ones found on bangarang are polished, mature in all senses of the word, and show growth in the best possible way out of his previous work.
as far as stronger tracks, bangarang ft. sirah and kyoto ft. sirah are easily my favorites, while the more relaxed summit ft [my girl] ellie goulding more or less holds the spot that ‘with you friends [long drive]’ held in the original scary monsters EP. kyoto is hyper aggressive [and pretty graphic, so look out haha]. i don’t know who sirah is, but she brings a pretty sweet element to the EP, and in a way takes the place of foreign beggars in ‘scatta’.
right in, right on time and devil’s den are all solid, maybe a little more dance geared and certainly more standard skrillex . devil’s den has…some pretty jarring straight noise, and i think probably has some secretly graphic lyrics like ‘kill everyone’ [a la i want to eat your heart]. right on time is not for those who don’t like trance or house. read: more or less the same thing over and over.
this leads me to the weakest track, breakn’ a sweat. the beat, wobbles, and general instrumental aspect is awesome, featuring some truly unique and original sounds not usually found in this kind of music. my but is that the song’s one lyric gets old after the first repeat. unfortunately it goes on for just over 4 minutes. don’t bother with this track if you hate repetition, but easily the saving grace here is the ridiculous dubstep/brostep aspect of it. truly musical noise.
i’m looking forward to a full-length release sometime soon. whoever stole his computer and his hard drive holding all his raw material and years’ worth of unfinished and unreleased tracks, freaking return it. you stole from modern art.
no cheers, thief.
anthony
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